The Top 25 Albums of 2009 (10-1)
Here’s my top 10 from ‘09. Sorry it’s all so late. Between work, having a new baby and having a toddler, it sometimes seems that blogging takes a backseat. Shame on me. Anyway, these “write-ups” are a little half-assed. Sorry.
10. Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
My question is this: who doesn’t like this album? I was on the fence with Phoenix for the longest time, but after seeing the band’s curiously perfect performance on Saturday Night Live last year, I was hooked. Every note, every beat, every subtle nuance of this album seems to have been considered within an inch of its life in order for Phoenix to create music with universal appeal in the truest sense. Every moment of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is pristine with world-class pop hooks, even if the track listing is misguided at times. This is intelligent stuff that just so happened to absolutely blow up with the rest of the world that hadn’t already been into Phoenix. It’s a well-deserved commercial success.
9. Bill Callahan Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle
“I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again,” says Bill Callahan during Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle’s opening track, “Jim Cain”. It’s such an odd, depressing, funny little line, but it’s also a pretty good summary of Callahan’s career and this masterful album as a whole. Callahan is a very literal songwriter, as best exemplified in album standout “Eid Ma Clack Shaw,” and it’s hard to know how, exactly, to react to these songs. They’re frequently beautiful, periodically haunting and occasionally quite hilarious. Essentially, Eagle is maintaining the same pace Callahan has been on since even his earliest Smog days, but in terms of overall quality, this may be Callahan’s most consistent work in nearly a decade, as poetic and sinister, smart and stinging as ever.
8. Propagandhi Supporting Caste
I never thought I’d be writing about how amazing the new Propagandhi album is in 2009, but I really should have known better. If there was one thing that this band did during the past decade it was get better, stronger and meaner while their 90s contemporaries fell by the wayside. And with Supporting Caste, only their third album of the decade (and their first outside of the more-harm-than-good shadow of Fat Wreck Chords), they’ve become, yup, the best punk band going. I’m not just talking about the board shorts and backwards baseball caps crowd either. Art kids, old school punks, thrash aficionados and left-leaning hockey fans should all be riding Propagandhi’s jock right now, as no one made a more fierce and impassioned album this year.
7. Passion Pit Manners
Apparently Passion Pit had to overcome a lot of backlash this year. I really had no idea, since I’m officially a hermit, but the very idea of it baffles me. How the hell can anyone dislike this stuff? On Manners Passion Pit mange to take the best moments of bands like MGMT, Justice, Hot Chip and even the Arcade Fire and distill them into one impossibly infectious album. After rifling four straight knockout tracks, Manners may seem to settle into a sort of comfortable groove, but it’s a trick, Manners simply keeps plugging away, whipping up one dance-pop frenzy after another. Chipmunk vocals have never felt so necessary. Manners is one of those special albums that becomes my favorite thing ever every time I listen to it.
6. Future Of The Left Travels With Myself And Another
If 2007’s Curses taught us anything, it was that there’s life after Mclusky for Andy Falkous. Travels With Myself And Another, however, shows us that Falkous is living life abundantly. Without losing an ounce of the dickheaded snarl of his previous band, Falkous has tightened and honed his pithy, scab-peeling sound (there’s still a lot of the Albini vibe here, but with a touch more melody, a touch less of the Frank Black influence and heaps of head-scratching, but hilarious non-sequitors). And while the lyrics are deranged and lethal, they wouldn’t be half as deadly without the precision of the band, with their robotic rhythm section and venomous guitars. There’s not enough of this kind of rock going around these days, but even if there was, chances are, Future of the Left would still be the best.
5. Dinosaur Jr Farm
Don’t call it a comeback. That was last album. Farm is more of an exclamation mark. Sure, a slow, nuanced, grower of an exclamation mark, but an exclamation mark nonetheless.
After the original members of the world’s greatest power trio reunited in 2007 for Beyond, everyone was surprised and grateful that a new album even existed. It was merely a bonus that the album was any good. With Farm, the hype is down a bit, but the stakes may be higher. Dinosaur has to justify its existence with each new release, but more than just being a band worth keeping around, J Mascis and Co. have re-established themselves as the one of the most necessary rock bands going today. In a world where the guitar continues to lose its cache in the music world, Dinosaur Jr simply refuses to become extinct. And thank God for that. Farm is a sprawling gem.
4. Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca
Some albums you have to listen to in a different way before they connect. Case in point: Bitte Orca. I was pretty psyched for this album’s release, anticipating greatness after the promise that was 2007’s Rise Above. When I heard “Stillness Is The Move” I was even more excited, hearing as how Dave Longstreth had finally hit the sweet spot between avant-garde indie and R&B’s luscious sound, but when I finally got my hands on the entire album, I was left cold. I didn’t hate Bitte Orca, but it didn’t connect. So, as I’m prone to do, I dismissed the album as overrated and went on my merry way.
Flash forward six months. I’m working on the Trout Mask Replica installment of my “Check Your Blind Spots” column and I hear something in Beefheart’s sound, that causes me to reconsider another piece of art. Something about the controlled disjointedness of Trout Mask made me re-evaluate Bitte Orca. Obviously, the two album’s don’t sound similar, but there’s definitely a through-line between the two albums as rhythm, melody and each individual instrument veer in differing directions. As I grew to enjoy Trout Mask, my ability to enjoy Bitte Orca expanded as well. Usually albums have to hit my ears hard, appealing to all my most base impulses, but Bitte Orca wasn’t so lucky. It had to worm its way into my head before it found a place in my heart. But just because I had to intellectualize the creativity of Bitte Orca doesn’t make it any less impressive. Sometimes albums are absolutely worth the elbow grease.
3. Japandroids Post-Nothing
There wasn’t much to Japandroids’ formula for success with the awesomely titled Post-Nothing: come up with a solid guitar hook and a catchy refrain or two. Repeat.
Japandroids’ songs are so simple, it causes one to work too hard to try and understand why they’re all so good. The band never outdoes themselves lyrically, essentially sticking to some basic lines repeated over and over again. There’s really not much more than three lines per song. Truth be told, almost every song on Post-Nothing could be cut in half and there really would be nothing major lost. Most of these tracks are completely fleshed out at the halfway mark, with the second half essentially being a mirror reflection of the first. But every minute of this album seems essential, each repeated refrain is a celebration and to not get the opportunity to return to it would be a major disappointment to both band and listener. Post-Nothing is the perfect album to end the decade – cutting through the bullshit that the modern indie scene brings with it and bringing us all back to what it feels like to be viscerally connected to an album. That’s the vibe I’m getting anyway, and Japandroids can repeat it all they want.
2. Raekwon Only Built For Cuban Linx…Pt. II
What more can one white guy say, I love the Wu-Tang Clan and this is as good a solo offering as any of the original nine members have produced (and they’ve produced a shit-ton of amazing solo albums). Overflowing with killer beats and mind-melting verses, those looking to criticize OB4CL2 have charged that the album is overstuffed and that there’s nothing new being brought to the table genre-wise. They’re valid points, but they’re not exactly criticisms. It’s a long album and would survive a little editing, and Rae and Co. aren’t blazing a trail here, but it’s been a good long time since there was a rap album this worthwhile, this satisfying. For the large part of 2009, rap fans focused on how The Blueprint 3 would stack up to its predecessors (unfavorably compared to part one, very favorably compared to part two), but this was the sequel to worry about, as the original OB4CL is a damned near perfect document, unsullied by any other attempts to reclaim the name. For Rae, however, the Cuban Linx brand was a barometer, a level to shoot for, and with all the delays this album went through in getting released, it looks like Raekwon was making damn sure that this could live up to its name. Well, it does. Actually, in my opinion, it actually exceeds the original. Nearly 20 years into their careers, the members of Wu-Tang remain relentless and worthy of canonization.
1. Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion & Fall Be Kind EP
Getting sick of the Animal Collective hype yet? No one wants to be inundated with a bunch of sycophantic critics heaping absurd amounts of praise on one band all year, finding ways to canonize an album only seconds after its release, but for Animal Collective in 2009, it was warranted.
With every album since 2004’s more-than-promising Sung Tongs, critics and fans have been heralding the latest Animal Collective as the album where the band finds the perfect marriage between the band’s trippy, tribal experimentalist leanings and their Brian Wilson, party anthem populist ways. In the past, those kinds of observations have felt a bit premature, but not here. MPP is the Animal Collective album that reaches out to everyone. Each song is weird enough to appease old fans, while celebratory enough to usher in new ones. And for those (like me) who were on the fence through this whole journey, MPP was a validation of years of half caring.
That the band capped of the year with a stunning and somewhat unexpected EP was only further proof that Animal Collective are worth everything they have gotten up to this point.